The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to providing a hidden data store for information handling systems using a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) partition table.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems such as, for example, servers, sometimes utilize storage systems such as, for example, Redundant Arrays of Independent Disk (RAID) storage system for the storage and retrieval of data. Those servers may be coupled to their storage systems by variety of different controller subsystems such as for example, host bus adapters (HBAs), storage controllers, and/or other pass-through devices known in the art. However, the use of such controller subsystems suffers from a variety of issues. For example, in the event of a failure (e.g., a disk failure) in the controller subsystem or accidental/unintentional formatting of a storage subsystem in the storage system, the data in that storage subsystem is lost. Conventional solutions to this issue require the user to perform daily data backups of critical data to remote servers and/or storage subsystems, which is time-consuming and tedious for the user.
In another example, in the event of an operating system failure in a server, a user will be unable to access the data in the storage subsystem accessed by that server until the operating system is repaired and/or restored on that server, or unless other servers are available (e.g., for importing data disks to a server to access the data). In a specific example, in the HADOOP® architecture, when a secondary name node in a storage subsystem is unavailable due to operating system failure/unavailability, there is no way to retrieve the latest edit logs to locate data nodes, and the entire application will slow down due to name node unavailability. In yet another example, with the current Universal Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) implementation, data on a storage subsystem cannot be accessed during a pre-boot or while in a pre-operating-system environment.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved data storage system.